generated ghetto-like enclaves. Large migrations and high birth rates have made Islam France's second-largest religion. The Neo-dominated working-class suburbs, that ring most French cities, have generated a unique culture with unemployment, poverty, crime and drugs.
As those Neo groups brought their special style to the New France, indigenous regional cultures saw a resurgence of their own, formerly suppressed, identities. This revival was marked by the proliferation of Basque and Breton-language schools, the rising popularity of Celtic music, the boom of regional tourism, the cult of local cuisines and the spread of provincial festivals that borrow as much from global trends as they do from ancestral traditions. The downside, in areas like Corsica and Brittany, is the persistence of a militant separatism that occasionally flares into violence.
Not all communities saw France as a land of equal opportunity and a melting pot. Despite mixed marriages, groups like the North Africans were excluded from socio-economic integration. Their unemployment rate was forty percent among young people of North African background. And though North Africans and black Africans had a token place in music and sports, they were almost totally absent from the social and economic mainstream. People say the presence of non-Gallos is good because it gives us athletes and artists. They say I’d like to see business people, lawyers, teachers, intellectuals, men and women policymakers. We’re not seeing that. The hurdles are higher for those of foreign background. Our problem is that even if we have an education and ideas, we’re up against little François and little Claude, whose parents can help them get jobs. We don’t have this network.
The French did not have the mental reflexes or institutions to be a multi-regional, multicultural society. It was not simply a problem of Settlers, but one of regional societies such as the Corsicans and Basques. There was already a great danger for the implosion into social micro-groups.
Almost six decades later, the plight of France’s African community, of which Algerians constitute the majority, remains bleak and discouraging.
The Republic had been based on the equality of all its citizens, the national territory, the French language and a secular state. The introduction of Islam as the second religion of France with a majority Arab followers forced concessions on weak politicians. Then came Corsica demanding a degree of autonomy so as to promulgate its own laws and the use of the Corsican language.
The Republic did not deny differences and left its citizens free to practice whatever religion they desired. However, the codification of the differences not only extended a permissive attitude to non-constitutional notions, it encouraged and broadened the divisions between the communities.
This was due to a consensus of opinions afraid to defend the constitution by appeasement for those who demanded greater rights than the majority and the generations and men who had laid the foundations of the Republic.
The political voluntarism of the citizens to defend the Republic and its constitution had slowly waned, leaving the road open to men who were prepared sell its values and traditions to for votes without looking beyond their immediate interest.
The French had waited for a man with the courage to face the reality of their nation that accelerated towards disorder and disintegration.
The result was the concentration of France’s African population in poor neighbourhoods of the inner suburbs after decades of state investment policies that encouraged illegal moonlight labour, and a housing policy that has gradually driven France’s non-Gallo working classes to the fringes of major cities.
The inner suburbs, with their run-down public facilities, substandard schooling, and high unemployment rates, had become home to all the social ills of a developed society, crime, drug abuse, family breakdown and gangsterism that repeatedly erupted in riots.
The Housing Projects
Cités, or housing projects, a word that had become synonymous with settler and Neo neighbourhoods, have almost all disappeared from France today, all that remains are the abandoned ruins of the vast housing estates that have been long emptied of their inhabitants. The remaining non-Gallos, who provide the vital services to cities such as Paris, live in the notorious Special Residential Zones. As I prepare these notes the Paris Zone is threatened by invasion as part of Boublil's solution.
In started with the rage and violence of the Neos, in their neighbourhoods in the large cities, this contrasted sharply with that of their foreign born parents’ docility. The pent up rage contributed to the worsening conditions in those neighbourhoods with the profound changes in French society that had resulted from the incapacity of the authorities to provide adequate solutions to the growing problems of economic and social integration of the new populations.
In certain cities such as Lyons, as much as seventy percent of the non-Gallos between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five were unemployed. Their frustration was frequently expressed by acts of vandalism and violence against their generation's isolation from both France and the countries of their parents or grandparents. The Neos explained that first arrivals had been a generation of victims, whilst their children, the Neos had become a generation of avengers, who did not try to hide their hatred for the French system that had confined them to being second-class citizens.
In response to the crime and random acts of vandalism by the young Neos the French authorities had reacted by zero tolerance tactics that included police raids and arrests of suspected delinquents in the no-go neighbourhoods. The consequence was more violence and resentment of the police who targeted young men with the wrong coloured face or accent.
The effects of globalisation on the French economy deeply affected industry and business during the early years of the century exacerbating the conditions in the underprivileged mostly settler and Neo neighbourhoods where persistent unemployment reigned as industrial production facilities were delocalised, with the loss of jobs, to countries where labour and social costs were lower.
Economic liberalisation and new energy technologies had reduced jobs in the automobile and manufacturing sectors, causing employment among the lowly skilled to soar, reaching up to forty five percent in certain areas of the country. The rate of juvenile crime had increased reached catastrophic heights. Trouble in the cités and suburban housing projects had become a daily event, covered by the press and television with nightly images of confrontation with the police, riots, burning cars, drugs and gangs. The consequence of the social disarray of the family and educational institutions was the opening of new cultural and religious associations that responded to the needs of the minorities.
The Gallo institutions faced a profound crisis as the Neo problem reached a degree that prompting the government to implement harsh law and order measures.
Those measures increased police surveillance in no-go zones where the law of the Republic was totally absent. After the Islamist bombings wave, the government introduced additional measures to control suspected terrorists from entering Paris, targeting youths from the cités. Patrols of riot police and armed soldiers were visible at every railway and Metro station, carrying out random identity checks on Neos and Settlers. Entry to Paris was policed to prevent trouble makers entering the capital, targeting vehicles driven by Neos.
The underprivileged neighbourhoods were cut off and slowly asphyxiated, creating a barrier between them and the Bobo city of Paris protected by the Périphérique, the ring road surrounding the capital, and above all, an ever-increasing security force of national, municipal, riot, and private police.
Across the European post-industrial society, few issues provoked as much discussion as the issue of Settlers. The Federation was pressed on all sides by legal and illegal arrivals, asylum seekers, who brought with them numerous other problems such as the schooling and integration of their children.
The dramatic and visible change in the traditional societies of Europe appeared like an invasion which was transformed into a fear that whereby many felt their world was in danger, and that the Europe simply could not provide a home to all
those in need. Public opinion soon turned rapidly against both legal and illegal non-Gallos. The almost biblical vision of ramshackle vessels grounded on the beaches of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean carrying infiltrators to the shores of Europe caused questions to be asked at levels of society.
A wave of xenophobia swept through France, Germany, England, Holland and Belgium, rejecting both existing and new Settlers. Across Europe the attitude towards accepting refugees and Settlers entered a new phase when the long privileged notions of assimilation, acculturation, and multiethnic harmony were overwhelmed by the birth of a violent Gallo European reaction. In France, the idea that French culture could assimilate all Settlers groups was overturned. Towns in France passed bylaws preventing foreign Settlers establishing homes within city limits.
The Flanders region of Belgium elected a coalition, which included the nationalist Vlaams Bloc, to power controlling major cities such as Antwerp where the mayor was a leading figure of the party. Their slogan was, ‘Our people first, seal our borders, send the Settlers home’. At the same time in Denmark and Austria, nationalist parties were elected to power with the problem of unwanted Settlers as the